France, 1930's: A Fatal Flaw in Liberalism

[Dragon]

If you don't see that Zinn was a communist, you were subsumed by personality....

Or, you've actually read his writing . . . or, you actually know what the word "communism" means, and don't redefine it as anything to the left of Atilla the Hun . . . or, you don't play the McCarthyist game of calling any liberal a communist on the flimsiest excuse, such as his small-scale participation in a non-communist organization that is vaguely associated with something that can be tangentially connected with someone who once visited Russia as a tourist.

 

[Political Junky]

Of course, what PC neglects to tell us is that FDR was our greatest Liberal President and that it was the US Conservatives that urged us to mind our own business and stay out of the war

Um FDR won an election by promising to keep us out of the war.

It was my understanding that FDR saw a way to get us out of the depression. War creates jobs producing weapons, ships, etc. And that's what happened, it got us out of the depression.

Japan declared war on us, followed by Germany, and Italy.

 

[Artevelde]

Um FDR won an election by promising to keep us out of the war.

It was my understanding that FDR saw a way to get us out of the depression. War creates jobs producing weapons, ships, etc. And that's what happened, it got us out of the depression.

Japan declared war on us, followed by Germany, and Italy.

You are mistaken: The US declared war on Japan after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (without Japanese declaration of war).
Germany did indeed declare war on the US before the Us declared war on Germany.

 

[Dragon]

You are mistaken: The US declared war on Japan after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (without Japanese declaration of war).
Germany did indeed declare war on the US before the Us declared war on Germany.

Japan did declare war on us. In fact, the intention was to declare war before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but they got their signals screwed up. As it was, they declared war immediately afterward, and well before Congress passed our own DOW on Japan.

 

[Unkotare]

Of course, what PC neglects to tell us is that FDR was our greatest Liberal President and that it was the US Conservatives that urged us to mind our own business and stay out of the war

Um FDR won an election by promising to keep us out of the war.

It was my understanding that FDR saw a way to get us out of the depression. War creates jobs producing weapons, ships, etc. And that's what happened, it got us out of the depression.

It was actually the fact that the war ended that got us out of the Great Depression. That scumbag FDR only prolonged it with the policies he forced on the nation, policies that are costing us to this day.

 

[editec]

"Historians" like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky are.

So two historians are communists, well then I guess we can trust the rest for the truth. Only two out of what, thousands, well that sure helps?

Chomsky is not a historian. He's a linguist.
Howard Zinn of course is a historian.

FWIW, Zinn was a professor of political science at BU.

Undoubtedly there are many left leaning historians. But there are also thers.

I'm a historian myself by training and I certainly am not left wing.

Zinn was in my opinion a humanist if any IST must be attached to his POV.

 

[Artevelde]

So two historians are communists, well then I guess we can trust the rest for the truth. Only two out of what, thousands, well that sure helps?

Chomsky is not a historian. He's a linguist.
Howard Zinn of course is a historian.

FWIW, Zinn was a professor of political science at BU.

Undoubtedly there are many left leaning historians. But there are also thers.

I'm a historian myself by training and I certainly am not left wing.

Zinn was in my opinion a humanist if any IST must be attached to his POV.

Zinn may have taught political science, but his PhD was in History and he was an active member of the AHA.
I think Zinn would certainly have considered himself leftwing and at least a socialist sympathizer if not an outright socialist (albeit a democratic one and not really a communist).

 

[Dragon]

I think Zinn would certainly have considered himself leftwing and at least a socialist sympathizer if not an outright socialist (albeit a democratic one and not really a communist).

Bingo. But the lumping together of liberals and communists is a ploy of dishonest persons as old as the Red Scare of the 1920s.

Calling Howard Zinn a Communist because he shares with Communists a desire for social justice, is equivalent to calling Mother Teresa a white supremacist because both groups are Christian.

 

[PoliticalChic]

So two historians are communists, well then I guess we can trust the rest for the truth. Only two out of what, thousands, well that sure helps?

Chomsky is not a historian. He's a linguist.
Howard Zinn of course is a historian.

FWIW, Zinn was a professor of political science at BU.

Undoubtedly there are many left leaning historians. But there are also thers.

I'm a historian myself by training and I certainly am not left wing.

Zinn was in my opinion a humanist if any IST must be attached to his POV.

"...if any IST must be attached to his POV."

Just doesn't seem to fit, techy:

'America-haterIST'?


"Not surprisingly, irrefutable evidence has emerged that the man who hated America for at least 70 of his 87 years was — (Guess what! Shhhhh! No coaching from the audience, please!)....Hate-America Howie was — a Communist. We always knew that was the worldview of his heart. But now it turns out that he made it official. Hate-America Howie was a formal member of the Communist Party-USA.

Hate America Howie (HAH) taught a class on "Basic Marxism" at party headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., advising his "students" that the basic teachings of Marx and Lenin "were sound and should be adhered to by those present"; HAH was a pro-Castro activist and backed radical groups such as the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Progressive Labor Party, and Black Panther Party; supported a Communist victory in Vietnam, visiting the Communist regime in Hanoi (ala "Hanoi Jane" Fonda — who — BTW — paid tribute to Howie upon his departure); in 1962, while President John F. Kennedy warned the Soviets to back off or suffer the consequences, HAH — at his quisling best — publicly protested the U.S. demand for withdrawal of missiles from Cuba ("hence," according to Kincaid, "Zinn wanted the United States and its citizens to be vulnerable to a Soviet nuclear attack" — Attention, parlor pinks: Note this great nice guy humanitarian's wish for you and me was nearly 10 years after Stalin died); a video tribute to Zinn was posted by the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPW)"
Howard Zinn: Communist liar


Wanna re-think that, techy?

 

[PoliticalChic]

If you don't see that Zinn was a communist, you were subsumed by personality....

Or, you've actually read his writing . . . or, you actually know what the word "communism" means, and don't redefine it as anything to the left of Atilla the Hun . . . or, you don't play the McCarthyist game of calling any liberal a communist on the flimsiest excuse, such as his small-scale participation in a non-communist organization that is vaguely associated with something that can be tangentially connected with someone who once visited Russia as a tourist.

You again!!

I should have anticipated your entry when the air suddenly became cold, and hordes of black flies appeared out of nowhere, and green slime began oozing out of the walls.

 

[Dragon]

I should have anticipated your entry when the air suddenly became cold, and hordes of black flies appeared out of nowhere, and green slime began oozing out of the walls.

I think you should see your psychiatrist. That new medication seems to have some really undesirable side-effects.

 

[PoliticalChic]

I should have anticipated your entry when the air suddenly became cold, and hordes of black flies appeared out of nowhere, and green slime began oozing out of the walls.

I think you should see your psychiatrist. That new medication seems to have some really undesirable side-effects.

Pffftttt!

Shows how much you know: I can't see my psychiatrist- I killed him.

 

[regent]

So assuming that historians are more of a liberal bent than the population in general, a question: Do liberals gravitate to history or does history convert people to liberalism? Which comes first?
And what of the other university acadamia, do they tend to be libeals or become liberal after their education. Is it education that creates liberalism? If that were true would not conservatives be doing all in their power to destroy education?

 

[PoliticalChic]

So assuming that historians are more of a liberal bent than the population in general, a question: Do liberals gravitate to history or does history convert people to liberalism? Which comes first?
And what of the other university acadamia, do they tend to be libeals or become liberal after their education. Is it education that creates liberalism? If that were true would not conservatives be doing all in their power to destroy education?

Reggie...if ignorance was made into bricks, you could build the Great Wall of China.
Radicals of the 60's took over every means of dissemination of information...starting with the universities.

That's why a traditionalist or conservative starts off with two strikes....and why they leave academia for greener pastures.

Here is a remedial for you:


1. The radicals of the sixties did not remain within the universities…They realized that the apocalypse never materialized. “…they were dropping off into environmentalism and consumerism and fatalism…I watched many of my old comrades apply to graduate school in universities they had failed to burn down, so they could get advanced degrees and spread the ideas that had been discredited in the streets under an academic cover.” Collier and Horowitz, “Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About The Sixties,” p. 294-295.

2. “The radicals were not likely to go into business or the conventional practice of the professions. They were part of the chattering class, talkers interested in policy, politics, culture. They went into politics, print and electronic journalism, church bureaucracies, foundation staffs, Hollywood careers, public interest organizations, anywhere attitudes and opinions could be influenced. And they are exerting influence.” Robert H. Bork, “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” p. 51

3. “[The radicals] did not go away or change their minds; the New Left shattered into a multitude of single-issue groups. We now have, to name a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual organizations, multiculturalists, organizations such as People for the American Way, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), the National Organization for Women (NOW), and Planned Parenthood.” Ibid p. 53

4. “The youthful radicals propelled a new set of values from the fringes to the midst of contemporary social conflict.” Rothman and Lichter, “Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left,” p. 392-394
Thus the themes and traits of the New Left have become prominent in today’s culture, and everything has become, ultimately, political. The result of the politicization of the culture is that one’s opponents are not merely wrong, but are morally evil, and, therefore, one may wish every affliction to befall them. Can you see the modus operandi of Liberals?

a. Campus rioters did not merely criticize universities as being in need of reform, but, rather, as institutions rotten with immorality from top to bottom.


b. So student radicals, imbued with the political grace of the Left, were also freed of the restraints of morality, specifically honesty: one could lie in a noble cause.

c. We can see the same religious absolution in Sorel’s belief that it was not wrong to break heads as well as laws.

d. Modern liberals no longer have to break heads, as they control many of the institutions they once attacked, but lie they must, and do, as they could not get elected advertising their actual agenda.

 

[daveman]

You have been misinformed.

Neither Zinn nor Chomsky advocate communism.

How do I know this?

Well among other things I studied with Zinn and I met and spoke to Chomsky.

Neither are communists.

But their "histories" are wildly inaccurate, sacrificing truth for ideology.

Feel free to point out all the historical inaccuracies you have found in your serious study of Zinn's history, Dave.

My problems with Zinn were never based on any historical inaccuracy he'd foisted.

My problems with Zinn were ALWAYS based on his analysis of what that history was actually telling us.

Tell ya what I think, Dave.

I think you've never actually studied either of what these guys wrote.

The fact that you claim either of them are communists informs me that you've never read anything they've written

I think you're making a statement about them based entirely on what somebody told you those guys thought.

Am I wrong?

I'm not saying they're Communist (although Chomsky in particular is sympathetic, and Zinn opposed capitalism).

I'm saying their histories are based on ideology, not truth.

And for that, I have the words of Zinn himself:

Objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.

-- Howard Zinn​

He flat-out tells you he's distorting history to serve his agenda.

But you just keep pretending he's unbiased.

I've read enough Chomsky to know he's just as full of crap. The way he denied and whitewashed the genocide in Cambodia -- really, there's no point in reading any of his other crap.

And no, I don't need to read anything else from either of them. Just as I don't need to see a Pauly Shore movie to know it's going to be stupid, I don't need to read more Zinn or Chomsky to know that their "histories" are full of crap.

 

[daveman]

"Arguably exaggeration"? No, it's unquestionably bullshit. You have to go back to the Dark Ages to find Taliban-like behavior among Christians.

That's because you have to go back to the Middle Ages to find Taliban-like theocratic power among Christians. The motivations of the Christian right and the Taliban are identical (allowing for the different religions involved), but we don't let the Christian right out without a keeper. That's the only difference.

EDIT: Actually, come to think of it what I said is only true in the United States, among the American Christian right. In less advanced countries, Christians can still behave in Taliban fashion.

So, you got nothing from this century.

Dismissed.

 

[daveman]

It's not wrong. Your position is utterly laughable and is in no way backed up by history.

There you go. Now you're being logically consistent, instead of claiming I said the opposite of what I did.

You're still wrong, though. Modern liberals agree with classical liberals on almost everything. Modern conservatives agree with classical liberals on almost nothing.

You leftists have a remarkable capacity for self-deception.

 

[daveman]

"Arguably exaggeration"? No, it's unquestionably bullshit. You have to go back to the Dark Ages to find Taliban-like behavior among Christians.

Your irrational hatred of Christians makes you say stupid shit.

Actually you just need to go to Uganda or Nigeria to see that... anno 2012.

Are you talking about the Lord's Resistance Army?

The LRA's ideology is disputed amongst academics.[40][56] Although the LRA has been regarded primarily as a Christian militia,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] the LRA reportedly evokes Acholi nationalism on occasion,[57] but many observers doubt the sincerity of this behaviour and the loyalty of Kony to either ideology.[58][59][60][61][62]​

Not really a Christian organization, and certainly not Christian in their actions.

Although you failed, at least you tried.

 

[Artevelde]

Calling Howard Zinn a Communist because he shares with Communists a desire for social justice, is equivalent to calling Mother Teresa a white supremacist because both groups are Christian.

Not all white supremacists are Christians. As a matter of fact, many are very anti-Christian.
And a very large percentage of Christians are of course not white (in any definition of the word).

 

[Artevelde]

So assuming that historians are more of a liberal bent than the population in general, a question: Do liberals gravitate to history or does history convert people to liberalism? Which comes first?
And what of the other university acadamia, do they tend to be libeals or become liberal after their education. Is it education that creates liberalism? If that were true would not conservatives be doing all in their power to destroy education?

I don't accept your premise. Among academics in general, and among historians, can be found people of all different political persuasions, from far-left to far-right and everything in between.